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Hmm I see specs of configuration with components with max $3300 price, not for $5,869.processor dealer price ~$1000-1100 depending on the volume of transaction; graphic card ~$400-450, all other hardware and software components ~$1400-$1800 depending on the volume of transactions.Reply

Let me guess what is going to happen if god forbid a part fails after that year... they will ask the consumer pay for a new one, but get a replacement from the part manufacturer for free - and cash in everything...

Thanks but no thanks, considering there is nothing custom about this system, you are far better ordering the parts and building it yourself, you will save yourself half the money AND build a better system with more warranty... And even if you are clueless enough to not be able to build it yourself, there are plenty of people who can do it for substantially less than 3500$ LOL...Reply

I did not put it because I advocate mac pro or apple, but as example of something shamelessly and ridiculously overpriced. And as much as I despise apple as a company, that video was lame. Who expect upgradeability from a system that is a:) small enough to hold in one hand and b:) powerful enough so you don't have to upgrade it? Only a complete idiot.Reply

Interesting you comprehended his statement that way when he specifically states, "I did not put it because I advocate MP or Apple, but as an example of something (reviewed rig) shamelessly and 'ridiculously' overpriced....and as much as I despise Apple as a company..."How is that defending Apple? ANY TECH GEEK reading this board that isn't giving Apple credit .(love em, hate em, doesn't matter) for the nMP design is an ignorant, uninformed doorknob. Period. It's an amazing change in workstation performance and as an owner of both Windows 7 workstations, older Mac Pros...and current, extremely happy new MP owner, I can honestly say with the rMBP, rMini, Air and new Mac Pro...as well as Apple's INCREASE in quarterly 'computer' earnings 'went up' while the entire industry is in decline. Again...love em, hate em, doesn't matter, they're innovation and clear vision of future computing, GPU instructions and PCIe storage with thunderbolt is a mind blowing achievement. While AMD FirePro cards aren't nVidia Quadro, they're outstandingly FAST for out workstation tasks...coloring, finalizing ans rendering of 4/5k RED RAW files, rendering, transcoding, editing and finalizing ...even in Premier/AE, it's a mind blowing experience...if you're an FCPx user, it's a night and day difference. Editing 4k/1080p feels like editing ProRes 480 files. Simply. Outstanding. Expect Dell/HP to transition form factors late 14, mid '15. My humble opinion. I use both Win 7 and OSx. Have for almost 30 years (starting on Apple IIe/c pre MS OS. How times have changed). My HP workstation from last year's batch of Xeon, ECC RAM, SSD storage, excellent warranty, etc...just over $9,200 when purchased. My $6,800 nMP runs circles around it (Bootcamp Win 7 or same tasks in OSx). Non 'believers' need do nothing but swing through an Apple store. Look at the form factor. Pick it up...then 'use' it for a half hour. Prepare to be blown away. With the progression of TB, won't be long before we can tie these guys together, utilize powerful, external GPUs....the next progressing is 40Gb/s, bi directional and HDMI 2.0 compliant. Couple of 4k displays simultaneously, editing and transcoding simultaneously, batch processing a couple hundred Nikon D800 RAW files, pick your poison. It's a MONSTER, the size of a kitten;)Reply

Umm, I could build a notably better system with that kind of money.Most of the Firepros actually outperform the Quadro cards (W9100 vs K6000, W7000 vs K5000).MP doesn't have a front io, you don't have any PCIe storage, thunderbolt 2 is available on consumer mobos, etc.Apple is pretending to innovate.Reply

I doubt that the processor is available for $1100. Still, online retail prices are processor $2200, GPU $800, motherboard $320, memory $330, power supply $122, case $140, MS Windows $132, giving a total of $4055. Figure less than $200 for liquid cooling, optical drive, card reader, and cables, and you are talking over $1600 markup. This certainly isn't justified by the warranty, since the expensive parts aren't covered after the first year. AVA Direct will sell a similar system for about $5000, with a 3 year parts, lifetime labor warranty.Reply

WD "blacks" also come with 5 year warranty. As do raptors. RE is considered enterprise because enterprise is considered RAID. But if it is regular PC system pretending to be enterprise in a desperate attempt to justify a ridiculous profit margin that doesn't even have actual raid, there is really no point of a RE drive, except to perhaps indicate very little thought was put into putting the configuration together, and what little was there was how to make it appear to be more worthy of its price tag, to the brilliant decision that an unnecessarily expensive hard drive not even put to its actual purpose will contribute to that image. If it is to be a single drive, a black or raptor is a much better fit, considering the lack of ECC memory and a bunch of other factors, plus they can work in RAID and improve redundancy too. I would definitely go for RE if I begin with the intent of a RAID array. Reply

I am curious if they turned TLER off. You do not want TLER on for a single drive since you want to let it take as much time as it wants to recover from errors. This drive has it on by default, because, well, RE=RaidEdition (originally); and for a RAID setup TLER is a feature you want.

If TLER is still on, it's just another item on the list that shows these guys don't really know what they're doing.Reply

Putting a Xeon on a consumer board is a complete waste, the only reason you need to pay the premium for Xeons is their support of the higher-end workstation boards and ECC ram. EVERYTHING ELSE IS LITERALLY THE SAME AS A Core i7. Putting a Xeon on a consumer board is just like throwing out money and I feel they're only doing it to advertise this as a "workstation".

Intel's Xeon line has always been extremely overpriced with very little differentiation from the consumer lines. They just hold back on support for multiple processors, ECC and some instructions to make sure that those who can afford to spend more, have to. Reply

This. I got to "not ECC" and just stopped reading, that's not a workstation that's a bad joke. Spending $4K+ on a system with a very expensive Xeon processor and they don't even bother with a workstation board and memory? Hahaha, no.Reply

There are flaws with the component selection and especially the price, but I do not question the Case, CPU, HDD, SSD, or Video Card choices. In my experience the WD RE drives, whether used in RAID or not, are excellent workhorses that run forever. The same has been true of the Samsung SSDs that I have used.

The CX750M is not a bad PSU and it is semi-modular, but I understand the complaint when there is this much of a price premium for the system. I would have expected at least a Gold if not a Platinum PSU in this price range.

Perhaps the initial markup is one of those ploys where they offer a 15% discount on the MSRP, but set the MSRP so high that they still make a significant profit per unit? Plus, I would have to imagine that the demand for this level of system must be pretty low.

Depending on the source cited, Macs seem to represent anywhere between 5 and 10% of the PC market. As far as I know, this includes all of the Mac product line, of which Mac Pros are a fraction of sales. I would imagine that for any of the other OEMs, these high-end workstations represent a similarly small percentage of their total sales, even if you limited things to only include other high-end non-workstation units. DS's volume discount on components is probably not that great due to the limited numbers being sold.Reply

"Depending on the source cited, Macs seem to represent anywhere between 5 and 10% of the PC market. As far as I know, this includes all of the Mac product line, of which Mac Pros are a fraction of sales." Well over 10% in the states, japan and Europe...closer to 20%. Sales of computers OSx style are UP! Opposite for PC (Window's sales for all OEMs). Try ordering a new MP. Just go to apple.com, configure your rig, get to check out and see the wait time for shipping. They can't make enough right now!Reply

Yea, Dell's warranty is longer and more capable "on paper", but that doesn't necessarily translate into good real world support. I had a HORRENDOUS time dealing with Dell for months when they refused to service a system still under warranty (and the issue was covered under the warranty terms). Worst experience with any company I have ever dealt with. So, for me, even if the the competition is much more expensive, I'd rather take my chances with them over Dell any day.Reply

Was it a workstation? Your support gets routed in different ways depending on exactly what product you're dealing with. Their consumer level support is horrible but I've had great luck dealing with their server support guys who are located in Canada.Reply

I've actually had a pretty good experience with Dell with their mobile workstation line and support. I had a few issues, from a bum GPU to a display issue, and each time they sent a tech out with the parts the next day and fixed every single issue.Reply

Yes, the pricing is kind of crazy, similar to Boxx, but for certain markets, a couple thousand extra dollars is a drop in the bucket - think big content creation market where budgets are often in the millions.

Not specific to DigitalStorm (or its pricing), but on the opposite end...

Anandtech is really behind the curve on "workstation" hardware thinking... Quadros and ECC memory are often completely useless and a waste of money. I use high-end CAD software (a lot of which uses DX) and often works better/faster on a top end i7 and a GTX then a Xeon and Quadro, while saving a lot of money. The tech industry has a motive and agenda to keep an artificial separation between the professional market and the consumer market, and for the most part it doesn't exist in reality. There's a very limited application space where something like a Quadro makes a difference (mostly high-end OpenGL performance), and even less for Xeons and even less for ECC memory (which in practice is only necessary for uninterrupted 24x7 applications). And yes, I know all about "certified" drivers, etc., which again, in practice generally means squat.

There are obviously usage scenarios where such hardware is needed, but tech sites (and their followers) need to stop feeding into the "professional workstation = Xeon/Quadro/ECC" conventional wisdom. I've seen countless dollars wasted on such hardware where inexpensive "consumer" hardware will run circles around it.Reply

More speed on a workstation can often result in more stability under higher loads.ECC is useful, but not when you're getting buttloads of data. It's good for debugging, and also testing programs. But as far as the actual development portion goes, speed is the first factor you look at. But ECC is still incredibly handy, and for the sake of redundancy, a standard feature.Reply

On one hand you say pricing nearly doesn't matter here, on the other you lament the pricing of professional class hardware. Derp.Quadros are very specialized and not needed for every professional, yes. But ECC is a must have with anything that is running for more than a day, because if you let something calculate the whole night, come back the next day and see a calculation error because of your RAM you just spent half a day of your time and the companies money for nothing. That time wasted probably would have paid for the ECC RAM. If you don't need the stability of these components, then you don't need a workstation. You need to understand that doing work on a PC does not transform that PC into a workstation. Otherwise my mothers Netbook is a workstation.Reply

another thing to consider against the mentality that "pro's don't really need..."these systems are usually bought for an operation by a reseller, the less time spent by said reseller supporting said installation the more moeny in the reseller's pocket.

and again if you are rendering out something on a workstation even if you don't need a quadro ecc is a life saver. not to mention good luck getting more ram in a system than 64 GB without ecc or a workstation class motherboard.Reply

But how much money did I just spend doing the research and then buying from 6 different places? This argument swings a little more weight if you source it from 2 places at the most. At least where I work, I'd be pissing money down my leg even sourcing from vendors I don't already use. I'll take the time to do it if the difference is big, but if I need this sort of machine, I'll buy it from Dell and move on to my actual work. And I say this as a hardware geek that dreams on being able to spend days sourcing hardware and building it out.Reply

KAlmquist - Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - linkI doubt that the processor is available for $1100. Still, online retail prices are processor $2200, GPU $800, motherboard $320, memory $330, power supply $122, case $140, MS Windows $132, giving a total of $4055. Figure less than $200 for liquid cooling, optical drive, card reader, and cables, and you are talking over $1600 markup. This certainly isn't justified by the warranty, since the expensive parts aren't covered after the first year. AVA Direct will sell a similar system for about $5000, with a 3 year parts, lifetime labor warranty. Replywwwcd - Thursday, April 24, 2014 - linkYes this is a consumer prices for one piece in shops. DigitalStorm do not buy components on retail prices.Reply

As others have said. If you are going to spend this much on a xeon/quadro system there is no reason to not go with ECC ram and workstation class mobo. The markup is high enough on this system to go with those components and still make a huge chunk of money. Such a shameReply

And at max load the system is only pulling 260 watts. So these genius's go with a super low end 760 watt 80+ bronze PSU. I mean really if the system is going to only pull 260 watts you really only need a 400-500 watt psu. The 80+ platinum 400 watt fanless seasonic is enough if you are 100% sure you will never add a second gpu. The 80+ platinum 520 watt fanless seasonic is the right choice if you may add a second gpu down the line. Both give you enough headroom to add as many hard drives and whatever else in the case as you want while the latter supplies an extra pci-e power connector for a second gpu and the wattage to go with it.Reply

The best way to choose the most appropriate psu is to find out the mean wattage you use for the most time on your pc. Say this one averaged at 200 watts majority of the time. Since PSU's are most efficient at 50% of their maximum the 400 watt psu would be the best choice then. If you are going to be running long calculations at maximum load all the time and ur constantly pushing the full 260 watts then the 520 watt psu is better since 260 is half of 520Reply

I'd say the exception is in cases where you run computations, say on a NVIDIA Tesla card (which are commonly used on workstations), where power usage fluctuates widely several times per second. I've seen 850 W power supplies consistently shut down power for the whole system in situations like this, even when the Tesla card's maximum power usage never exceeds, say, 250 W (so max total system power usage closer to 400 W than to 500 W). An overspecced power supply tends to avoid this kind of problem.Reply

Just got the Nexus wireless charger from Amazon and they are going absolutely crazy with the discounts with these brands. If you don't have a promo code, you can use this one: http://amzn.to/1iyFZfq - before they take it down.Reply

I bought a 'custom workstation' from Digital Storm, and had problems w/it from day-1. Due to my heavy work-load, I could not afford the down-time, which is why I contracted w/DS to build my machine. But after 2 years of headaches and problems, the computer finally quit working while troubleshooting w/their 'techs'. Turns-out, they selected uncertified RAM and never set the values properly in the BIOS. Plus, they stuffed an eATX m/b into an ATX case, and jacked-up the ESATA connectors/cables @ the edge of the m/b against the recess in the case. Also, it took an EVGA (the m/b mfgr) tech to figure out what was wrong w/the build. So, besides the wrong RAM, and a too small case, their builders and tech were incompetent. As for 'Warranty Support': They gave me the run-around time after time until I took matters into my own hands and figured out how to fix the problem. After $1000 out-of-pocket, and over 100 hours of tech 'troubleshooting' between the 2 companies, plus 6 months of broken work computer, I'm all the worse for the wear. Would I recommend DS? Nope. Would I buy from DS again? You're kidding me, right? I learned that if you want the job done right, DO IT YOURSELF. As far as Digital Storm is concerned: BUYER BEWARE! Cheers ... ChrisReply